iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 2h

Honestly, I think that habaneros are one of the most beautiful peppers. Watching them ripen is like watching a sunset.

Four habaneros on a pepper plant in front of a stucco wall.

Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 3h

Just inadvertently dropped a very casual f-bomb in conversation with the ten-year-old, saying, "...you know, your fuckin' pillows or whatever..." We both acted like it didn't happen.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 4h

When I was a waiter I used to have to do this table side at this one place I worked. I hated it. At best about half of the ones I did came out looking half as good as this. At best. Other folks made it look easy. I just never got the feel. For doing it smoothly.

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Spokane Rising @spokanerising.com · 29/09/2026

Send Stephen Miller to The Hague.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As the parent who does most of the cooking in my home, responsibility for choosing what to feed to my children is one of the last things I would ever hand over to an AI. If you know how to feed them, feed them. If you don't, then fucking learn. If you need ideas use fucking Google or ask a friend.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ok. Streaming channel concept: Like "Shudder," except for cozy romantic ghost stories. Call it "Flutter."

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Driving to school this morning and a car sped past pumping loud music from its open windows The 5-year-old declared, "That music is INAPPROPRIATE." Curious about where he learned to say something like that, I asked why it was inappropriate. He paused. "I think it was a song about monsters."

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edith @edithcharles.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

If this isn't your response to doomerism I don't want to know you

Samwise carrying Frodo up the steps of Mount Doom

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Tyler, from the Internet @tylerfromtheinternet.com · 26/09/2026

after they are finished with trans people, and disabled people, and autistic people, they'll come for adhd people, and go right on through the list. fascism is a fire that cannot be quenched. once everyone is a cishet white male, they'll start burning people for being short, or having webbed toes.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The five-year-old made himself a peanut butter and bubblegum sandwich for breakfast this morning while my wife was in the bathroom.

A plate. With a somewhat messy peanut butter sandwich, a roll of bubble tape bubble gum, a loaf of sandwich bread, and two knives.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wait. Two of the shows on this list are designated as "Season 1" but none of the others get that privilege. WTF. Either we're talking about specific seasons, or we're talking about shows, but it seems disingenuous to pick and choose.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I've been a Tom Waits fan for more than half my life, and I saw the previews for the new animated retro sci-fi noir movie he's co-starring in, and it gives me no pleasure to predict with some confidence that it's probably going to be utter dog shit.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So apparently I've been confusing the shows Longmire and Letterkenny.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Just bottled the last 2 gallons of last year's mulberry mead. After 18 months, it's spectacular.

Two 1-gallon jugs of a purple liquid so dark it's almost black.

10 recently filled wine bottles of mulberry mead.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

First day of proper jacket weather here in baltimore. I'm a happy camper.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Man, I'm glad Baltimore weather finally stopped pussyfooting around with all the "maybe it will rain, but maybe it won't" bullshit.

Gordon Ramsay meme where he's complementing a plate of food, but with the caption saying, "Finally, some good fucking rain."

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The common denominator in all of your failed relationships is you.

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It really is striking how many authoritarian states have ended up in this exact same place, where the leader seizes control of scientific inquiry. Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, Aryan Physics in the Third Reich, Great Leap Forward (also related to Lysenko) in China.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Last week was "Back to School Night" for my wife's mostly-Hispanic school. It was severely under-attended. She asked teachers from other nearby schools and the pattern was consistent. Latino parents didn't come out. Fear pervades.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Just heard about Annie Dillard's passing. I encountered Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when I was a college freshman more than 30 years ago, and it stayed with me. Its DNA is all over my current writing project.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Up at the Baltimore Book festival and I can't describe how depressing it is to see the massive amount of AI generated kids book slop. It's immediately obvious, and it turns me off so quickly. We're in a city full of talented artists who would illustrate for next to nothing. It's reprehensible.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

So, I listened to Pink Pony Club for the 1st time and 3 things occur to me: 1. It evokes some of the same feelings as Walk on the Wild Side 2. The Kidz Bop version uses mostly the same lyrics, which is amusing 3. It makes me want to run a strip club full of all sorts of beautiful genderqueer people

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

20-year-old me would be disappointed with my lack of a music career, but impressed with the fact that I went back to college and got a couple degrees, and with how much world traveling I got to do. And I think he'd be a pretty enthusiastic fan of both my wife and my kids.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

21st century political violence in the US doesn't really come from the left. It comes almost entirely from one of two places: 1. The far right. 2. Neurotic weirdos overwhelmed by pain and chaos with unmappable political opinions.

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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The thing about trying not to pick a side is that the nazis *instantly recognize* which side you picked. They immediately identify you as an ally. They know exactly what side you're on. It doesn't fool the victims, it doesn't fool the Nazis, the only people it could possibly fool is centrists.

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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Once my (then) 8-year-old was doing dramatic silly dances. At one point he grabbed a tic-tac & tossed it into his mouth like he was about to swallow a pill. He grimaced at me w/ it between his teeth & proclaimed, "THIS IS THE GOD-KEY!" before crushing it swallowing it, & flailing off up the stairs.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This morning I gave my 10 year old son his great grandmother's 100 year old silver shoehorn. He uses it to put on his Nikes. He loves it.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Making myself a turkey sandwich for lunch, and I offered to make one for my wife as well. Her response: "Why? Are we out of ice cream?"

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I keep clicking on articles that mention Dario Argento, and they keep ending up being articles about Dario Armodi. This timeline sucks.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

make a band edible: Massive Snack Attack

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

You’ll notice that as ever, the annoying dirty hippies called the War On Terror correctly and all the smart, Sensible important people dived into it with both hands giving everyone the finger and screaming insults, and now it’s just another One Of Those Weird Things That Happened.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

RT with your home river. The Jones Falls. An engine of innovation and growth for the city of Baltimore. Hundreds of Mills were set in motion along its downward path to the Inner Harbor and The Chesapeake Bay. Future site of the Jones falls Riviera - the best tubing destination in the world.

A photograph of the round fall on the Jones Falls River
Round Falls in Baltimore https://share.google/knpypbgcaYKVXvIJl

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Mr. Completely @brokensymmetry.art · 09/09/2026

The most beautiful and interesting little piece I've read in as long as I can remember

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 08/09/2026

For a certain kind of white man, there is no fear more primal than the fear that the people they have abused will gain power and treat them the same way.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The 5 year old: "Dad, I'm into chicken nuggets."

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Pine cone oak gall. A wasp lays eggs in an oak tree branch, and it just does this weird fucking thing. I've seen other wasp galls, and they're all weird, but this one's just particularly weird. The end of the branch just deforms to look like a strange diseased pinecone. But it's an oak tree.

A strange spherical pink cluster of deformations on the end of an oak branch.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Jupiter and the crescent Moon at dawn.

Photograph of the eastern sky at sunrise. Crescent Moon is prominent, with Jupiter as a speck of light below it.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I started journaling in May of 2020, just as a way to keep the days from blurring together in the early covid era. I just filled up journal number 16. It's become a critical part of my morning and evening routine. ixak.medium.com/whats-workin...

Stack of 16 hardbound journals, with alternating black and red covers.

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Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

If you abstract nearly every political fight beyond its material specifics, so many are actually about agency - I think this is an opening for a bigger story Democrats could tell. amandalitman.substack.com/p/my-toddler...

amandalitman.substack.com

My toddler theory of American politics

People want to be in charge. What if we gave them their agency?

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Ah, the danger of speech to text encapsulated in two distinct messages "You're going to love this colon" "You're going to love this:"

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Worked in a snowball stand on Reisterstown road just across the street from Reisterstown Road Plaza in NW Baltimore one summer (1991, maybe?). Just blasting tunes, reading books, and pouring flavored sugar syrup over shaved ice three or four days a week. Made more in tips than in hourly wages.

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Potempkin Village Idiot @ixak.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"It's very European." I tell my children, as I teach them that they can eat their tater tots with tartar sauce

A solitary tater tot sitting in a ramekin of tartar sauce.

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